The editorial staff of National Catholic Reporter has questions, like many of us, about the details of the new universal law in the motu proprio recently issued by Pope Francis. Does it replace the tribunal announced last year? Who is committed to making the new policy work? Will the process devolve like diocesan review boards into window-dressing appendages controlled entirely by the bishops themselves? As the NCR editors state, let a priest or bishop stray the slightest from “the narrowest orthodoxy” and removal is swift, but let a bishop cover up clergy sex abuse, and nothing happens to the bishop–for more than 30 years, the Church still has not held such bishops accountable. We all are waiting to see whether this new approach will. If at all.

Here’s the full editorial.